


The Secret of the Angry Days

by BonKatze



Category: Captain America (Movies), Marvel Cinematic Universe, The Avengers (Marvel Movies)
Genre: Angst, Implied Relationships, M/M, Seriously tons of angst, Starbucks, Stucky - Freeform, attempt to repress the gay lovin, bottom!Steve, btdubs, clint is also mentioned, gay lovin, i guess, i shouldn't be allowed to make my own tags, implied pre-serum gay lovin, khakis, not successful, once - Freeform, slight AU, slight PTSD, stucky fanfic, tony is briefly mentioned, winter solider - Freeform, wintershield - Freeform
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-07-02
Updated: 2014-07-02
Packaged: 2018-02-07 05:19:06
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,664
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1886529
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/BonKatze/pseuds/BonKatze
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>That title is far too lighthearted for the angsty shit I just wrote.</p>
<p>Bucky has mostly good days, sometimes bad days, and then sometimes he has angry days and Steve doesn't know why, but he's going to figure it out, because that's what friends do for each other...</p>
<p>...right?</p>
            </blockquote>





	The Secret of the Angry Days

**Author's Note:**

> Tony is only sparingly mentioned. This is all the fault of this post: http://zombikki.tumblr.com/post/90536283928/while-bucky-is-recovering-and-getting-back-into
> 
> I regret nothing.
> 
> I sense a trend here. I see a good head canon, I write said head canon. I have a disease, halp.
> 
> If you have an interesting head canon you want me to write, send it to my tumblr and I'll probably do it if I like it a lot.
> 
> http://bonkatze.tumblr.com
> 
> Woo, shameless promotion.

Bucky is trying. Really, really trying. He tries to stick to routine, like Steve told him. He wakes up every morning, and even though the location varies (sometimes next to Steve, sometimes rigid in the arm chair that faces the door, and once, crouched in the corner of the elevator, where he almost strangled Tony, who startled him and who had only intended to head up to bed from his workshop for the night) every morning he wakes up, seldom after the sun has cleared the horizon fully, and goes with Steve for runs. Steve used to try and talk to him. He’d make casual observations, point out various buildings, talk about when they were stupid kids. Bucky could never find it in himself to contribute. So Steve stopped talking as much, little by little, until their runs became silent save for the light tread of pounding feet over asphalt and the morning hum of the wakening city. Bucky misses when Steve talked.

The days are easy. It’s the kind of summertime living old jazz singers croon about, the kind he used to idealize and now abhors. Sometimes the Avengers are called for missions, and always Steve will find him, wherever he’s chosen to exile himself for the day, and say goodbye and never, ever does he take Bucky with him. Sometimes he’ll kiss the top of Bucky’s head, and Bucky has to suppress the urge to call him mom, or maybe cry for all the times he said goodbye to Steve _before_. Bucky never likes it when Steve leaves him, but it isn’t so bad when he says goodbye like that. Sometimes Bucky thinks he’ll pull Steve off course and kiss his mouth, but never does.

Routine suits Steve, always has, but Bucky hates the monotony. He has clothes of his own, Shield regulation shirts and pants, but he doesn’t wear any of them. Instead, he skims Steve’s grey sweats and white shirts from the top of his folded laundry, and even though they’re loose and they make him feel small, they help him feel at home in the void. Bucky watches television, tries to read books Steve gives him, slams his fists over and over into the punching bags Tony specially designed for his bionic arm, and sometimes sneaks into Tony’s workshop, hides in the shadows in the corners, and just watches, eyes narrowed. Tony pretends he doesn’t notice.

Steve calls these good days. Bucky can’t figure out anything good about them. It’s the same thing, all day, every day. He’s trying. He really is. He tries to smile instead of jerk when Steve curls an arm around his waist, tries not to close his eyes when he catches Steve watching him. Bucky is trying, but mostly he’s terrified. One day, everything is going to crash all around him. He’s afraid he’s going to hurt someone. He’s afraid he’s going to hurt himself. He’s afraid he’s going to hurt Steve.

Then there are bad days. That’s what Steve calls them. They breed more routine, strict schedules of monotony that exceeds that of the good days. These days always start the same; Bucky wakes in Steve’s bed. He doesn’t move, holds his breath, eyes wide. He assesses the threat. Steve, arms around his middle, chest against his back. The bionic arm tightens, his spine straightens, nostrils flare. He always wakes Steve this way. After, when he’s better, when he’s _remembered_ , he feels guilty. He hates waking Steve. _Before_ , it was hard for Steve to sleep. Steve has no trouble now, not since Bucky came back, but Bucky remembers, and so he can’t help but berate himself for denying Steve. He never could deny Steve anything. Not even _before_ , when he knew he should; could never resist insistent lips and quiet whispers in the dark.

On those mornings when Bucky wakes up unable to remember, Steve holds him tight, wraps his legs around Bucky and holds fast. When it’s happening, Bucky feels restrained. He thrashes until he can’t, and then he shivers, panting, afraid. Steve holds him, doesn’t let go, and presses his nose to Bucky’s throat and breathes, over and over assuring him,

“You know me.”

No he doesn’t.

“I love you.”

Who are you?

“It’s only me, Bucky. Only Steve.”

Who the hell is Bucky?

“You’re going to be okay. I’m here. Until the end of the line.”

Over and over, until Bucky has no choice but to accept it, to slow his breathing down, to relax his arms and back and close his eyes. It always takes the whole morning, always takes him hours to remember again. It hurts. Each time, it hurts. “I’m sorry,” he says, and Steve shushes him and tells him it’s okay, he’s okay, they’re okay. Bucky can’t find it in himself to believe Steve. He’s always trusted Steve, but he can’t trust him on this. It doesn’t feel like it’s going to be okay. It never does.

Those are the bad days. The day feels wasted, and Bucky would usually mind, but he doesn’t. He can’t. He can’t, because the bad days are the only days Steve will hold him that way, will touch him. They spend the bad days in bed, and Steve lets Bucky run his fingers everywhere, taking Steve in. He hates the way he can’t feel Steve’s pulse with his bionic arm, hates the idea that maybe he’s hurting Steve when he clutches at him and just breathes, but can’t stop until he’s everywhere, all at once, and both of them are back where they started that morning, wrapped around each other. Bucky misses the way it was _before_ , when he didn’t need a bad day to touch Steve like this. He hates the way it reeks of pity, reeks of regret. He used to love the sound of his name on Steve’s lips, but now he forces himself to kiss Steve until he stops saying it, and it tastes acrid and sour and full of hurt.

And then, very seldom, very rarely, there are the days Steve calls “angry days”. Bucky won’t acknowledge these days. They aren’t like bad days. Bucky wakes up fine, as okay as he thinks he’ll ever be, goes for his run with Steve, wishes Steve would talk to him, and then they go home, and Steve lets him have the shower first, because he’s a fucking gentleman, and some mornings they fight over Steve’s self-imposed obligation to look after Bucky. Even though Bucky has a whole room for himself, a whole bathroom, courtesy of Tony, he only ever uses Steve’s bathroom, and he sleeps in Steve’s bed, so even though he won’t admit it, maybe Steve’s duties aren’t so self-imposed. He thinks he might lose it worse if he didn’t let Steve take care of him. He showers, and he slips on Steve’s clothes, and he curls up somewhere he feels adequately secure, and waits to see if it’s going to be an angry day.

When it is, Steve knows, because he doesn’t see Bucky all day. Usually, he spots Bucky right out of the shower, right after he’s dressed. Bucky lets Steve see him, lets Steve know where he is. On angry days, Bucky doesn’t let Steve see him. Once, on an angry day, Steve accidentally tried to get an apple from the kitchen counter while Bucky was rifling through the fridge. There was a standoff, Steve’s hand half-way to the fruit, Bucky watching through narrowed eyes, the fridge door open and forgotten. Bucky had stalked out, feet heavy, arms taught at his sides. When Steve tried to use the training room, he heard through the door Bucky’s bionic arm slamming into one of Tony’s punching bags, and thought better of disturbing Bucky. When the team gathers at night to watch a movie, or eat dinner, Bucky usually sits next to Steve, watches everyone carefully, and burrows into the arm slung around his shoulder. On angry days, Bucky disappears all night, doesn’t come to “team bonding”, and Steve sighs and shrugs his shoulders at the raised brows and questioning eyes.

After the fifth angry day Bucky has, Steve decides he needs to eliminate whatever is triggering them. He starts removing potential triggers. He stops offering Bucky the shower first, instead waiting to shower until Bucky has. It delays his morning the first few times, until Bucky realizes Steve isn’t going to shower until he does, and while it improves Bucky’s morning demeanor by avoiding the conflict of Steve being so considerate and Bucky irritated that Steve feels like he has to take care of Bucky, on the third morning, Bucky has an angry day despite all signs pointing to a good day, and Steve has to regroup.

Steve tries changing the running route in the morning. He takes him to different parts of the city, shows him all the buildings like he used to, chatters away even though he knows Bucky won’t say anything to him. He thinks maybe Bucky gets tired of the same thing every morning, and while it certainly improves Bucky’s mood, and they go a week and a half without an angry day, on a Wednesday morning when Steve has a meeting for Shield to be at, Bucky has an angry day before he can even say goodbye. Steve doesn’t kiss the top of Bucky’s head that morning, because he can’t find Bucky at all, but he yells goodbye from the front door after everyone else has left. Bucky doesn’t say a word, but he watches from the vent where he’s seen Clint perching.

It strikes him during the meeting that maybe Bucky’s angry days are triggered by his absence for Shield meetings, but he knows that isn’t the case after reconsideration. Bucky’s angry days are sporadic. They come after good days, after bad days, and after nights he lets Bucky explore his body well into the morning, knowing Bucky needs this, needs him. It makes him blush when he thinks maybe Bucky needs more, and the angry days come out of frustration and pent-up arousal. He has to cross his legs the rest of the meeting, resolving himself to give Bucky more leeway tonight. He thinks maybe he can cure the angry days if he lets Bucky go back to the way things were _before_.

After team bonding, after everyone else has retired to their separate rooms and night activities, and Steve and Bucky are still on the couch, sides flush, Steve colors and turns his head into Bucky’s neck and presses his lips to the hollow at his throat. It takes Bucky approximately three seconds to assess the situation before he’s got Steve on his back on the couch, presses himself into Steve like he could crawl inside, and it makes Steve feel vulnerable and weak like _before_. Steve spends the whole night blushing, and the next morning, after they run, Bucky doesn’t shower before Steve, he pulls Steve into the shower with him, and they repeat all the actions from the night before, fingers practicing and committing each other to memory like pianists practicing for grand recitals.

Bucky has an angry day that day, worse than usual, and Steve can’t figure it out.

He’s peeling out of his clothes for the night, stripping off his shirt and khakis when it hits him – 

It’s the fucking khakis.

It’s the strangest dejavu, a brand of nostalgia and bemusement at Bucky being so upset over pants, and confusion as to why something so mundane would trigger Bucky’s behavior. He can’t be bothered to care about his decided state of undress as he wanders the halls in search of Bucky, who has, as usual, sequestered himself in some no doubt very uncomfortable place to brood. Steve can’t keep the smile off his face.

“Bucky, come here,” Steve says, and it sounds more like he’s telling the punch line to a joke rather than expecting answers.

“Bucky, I’m sorry, okay?” He pleads, eyes bright and lips curved upwards. “Let me talk to you.”

He’s halfway down the hall to the kitchen when he hears something bang, and then there’s Bucky, emerging from the left, and Steve decides it’s better not to ask.

“I figured it out,” Steve says. The smile has melted. Bucky’s eyes are wild, searching up and down Steve’s body like Steve is an ocean and Bucky is dying man on a raft – he’s surrounded by something that he can’t have without it killing him.

“It’s the khakis.”

Bucky is on him, pressing Steve into the wall, noses so close Steve feels like he’s inhaling everything Bucky is exhaling, both of them breathing hard.

“Do you know why I hate the fucking khakis so much?” Bucky growls, holding Steve by the bicep so hard he’d be afraid to leave fingerprints if he didn’t know the serum won’t allow for them. Steve swallows, and Bucky tracks the bob of his throat.

“No,” Steve says. Bucky shifts, presses closer _as if that’s even possible_ and Steve tries so hard to hide how much this is turning him on.

“Because they make me want to do filthy, filthy things to you, Stevie,” Bucky says.

It’s over. Steve’s done for.

“You sit there, all clean cut with your hair gel and your khakis,” Bucky grits out, between teeth clenched around the skin at Steve’s neck, “the perfect all-American specimen, and I can’t stand it. I can’t stand seeing you so perfect.”

Steve is almost confused, but he can’t figure out any of his emotions anyway, so the confusion is probably a mix of things. He’s arching and bucking and even though he isn’t saying a word, he’s sure Bucky can hears the way he begs.

“So I have to fix you,” Bucky says it like it’s absolute truth. Like Steve is something broken in need of fixing, like he was perfect _before_ , and the serum was the whole trouble. “Remind you who you are – who you were, and who you are to me. Remind you that you aren’t so perfect. You’re just as fucked up as me, Stevie.”

Steve would find it jarring, to be told something so unequivocably true about himself, something he’s so afraid of, but the whole thing is just so ridiculous – so fucking surreal. He’s here, with Bucky, and he’s figured out the secret of the angry days, and so when Bucky takes him to bed, takes him so completely, in a way he hasn’t taken him since _before_ , Steve thinks to himself, _shut up for once_ , and they spend the night together, intertwined more tightly than they ever have been, and when they wake in the morning, Steve knows that the angry days, at least, are over.

Bucky wakes up the next morning, and something in the air has shifted. He feels content. He feels real. He thinks maybe, for the first time in a long time, he can have a “good day”. A real “good day”. He thinks, maybe, with Steve by his side, with his memories intact, at least for today he can stop being the Winter Solider and just be Bucky. It’s a close truth. Bucky has a good week. He only has one bad day, and it’s over fast, because he has Steve, and that’s all he needs.

Bucky is still trying, but he doesn’t have to try as hard. He still has bad days. He still wakes up sweating, and Steve still holds him securely until he calms down, but now when Bucky touches him, Steve doesn’t smell like pity, and when Steve says his name and Bucky kisses it off his lips, it doesn’t taste like guilt. Sometimes, after they shower together, Steve puts on the khakis and only laughs when Bucky glares at him, but then they’re sprawled across the bed, and Steve has stopped laughing, and Bucky decides maybe he doesn’t mind the khakis so much, as long as every time Steve wears them he gets to spend his mornings like this.


End file.
